Journalists covering the Pentagon and Trump adnistration are subject to new rules that restrict media access to most areas within the Pentagon and appear to be conditioned on agreeing to limit reports and subject to overall entry into the building.
While Defense Secretary Pete Hegses’ team characterizes change as an effort to protect national security and security for people working in the Pentagon, many in the press see it as an effort to avoid embarrassing stories and avoid embarrassing stories.
Journalists who want to hold a badge granting access to the Pentagon were told on September 19th that they must sign a letter acknowledging the new rules by this Tuesday. The new policy states that Pentagon information, even if it is uncategorized, must be made public for disclosure by appropriate authorization personnel.” Classified materials face even more severe restrictions.
That level of control quickly became wary of journalists and their supporters.
“Requiring independent journalists to submit to these types of restrictions is a tough odds for attempts to narrow down the constitutional protection of the free press in democracy and the rights of the people to understand what the government is doing.”
We fight over what the new rules actually mean
in Subsequent letters To the Press Commission for Freedom of the Press, Aide Hegses Sean Parnell suggested that journalists misunderstood some of the new rules. He said, for example, restrictions on the disclosure of uncategorized information are policies that Pentagon officials must follow. It’s not something that journalists have to follow.
“It’s not surprising that mainstream media is misrepresenting the Pentagon’s reporting procedures again,” Parnell said in an X post.
However, the new policy states that Pentagon officials could lose access to the building, seeking information from journalists, or sources, who encourage them to break rules.
RCFP lawyer Grayson Clary said Parnell seemed to have tried to soften some of the hard edges of his policy in response to questions raised by the reporter’s committee, but there was still enough disruption to be worthy of the meeting. There is some alarm among news organizations about agreeing to a letter if they sign it, and it is not clear how many people are doing it, no matter what.
The new rules continue the tense relationship between the media and the Hegustes team. I drove some news outlets From their regular workspaces in favor of more accessible outlets Capacity has been limited A reporter walking around the pentagon. Hegseth and Parnell rarely hold press briefings.
Parnell did not respond to a request for comment by the Associated Press.
For one editor, it’s all about control
“It’s a control, just 100% of it,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of Atlantic Magazine. Goldberg, who is not stationed in the pentagon, wrote the most embarrassing story of Hegses’ tenure so far, when he was It is inadvertently included In the Signal Group Chat, Hegses and other national officials discussed the impending attack on Yemen’s Houtis. Brouhaha is widely known as the “SignalGate.”
The Pentagon leadership was also reportedly unhappy with the story that Elon Musk explained China’s military strategy and led President Donald Trump to stop it, leading him to other stories about the initial assessment of the damages of a military strike against Iran.
Goldberg said no American reporter has identified him as a pentagon as he knows he’s interested in destroying national security or causing harm to the military.
In his own case, Goldberg did not report on what he had learned until the attack was over. He said he contacted the group chat officials and asked if he had learned anything. He did not include the names of CIA officials in his story, who mentioned messages that were still technically infiltrated.
“The only people at Signalgate who were injuring the US military were US national leaders by discussing the launch times for strikes in hostile countries on commercial messaging apps,” he said.
Access to Pentagon officials is invaluable to help reporters understand what is going on, says Dana Priest, a longtime national security reporter for the Washington Post, who is now a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. With the exception of a few areas, reporters are not permitted under new rules for walking the Pentagon without official escorts.
The priest said the Pentagon corridors looked like the area around the Congress where reporters were home to buttonhole politicians. The priest recalled stabbing military officials waiting for them to come out of the bathroom.
“They know that the media’s goal is to avoid official gobbled drigooks and get the truth out,” the priest said. “They may not help you, but some of them want to know what’s going on with Americans.”
Experienced national security reporters know there are many ways to get information through other channels of government and people in the private sector. “The Pentagon is always very familiar with the advantage of being in control of the story, so they’re always trying to do it,” she said. “Reporters know that. They’ve known it for decades.”
Is there any common ground between the Pentagon and the reporter?
Reporters who do not follow the new rules are not necessarily banished anytime soon, Parnell told the reporters’ committee. However, access is determined by Hegseth’s team.
Reporters already stationed at the Pentagon were given to sign until September 30th, but they were allowed to request a further five days for legal review.
The Times, the Washington Post and the Atlantic have all issued statements against the Pentagon’s plans, but none of the publications say that reporters are encouraged to do it.
President Donald Trump has not hesitated to fight the media when he thinks he is being treated unfairly. CBS News, ABC News, Wall Street Journal and The era. But he is too Frequently accessible For the press, there was some uncertainty about the Pentagon policy in the White House, more than many of his predecessors.
When a reporter asked, “Shall the Pentagon be responsible for determining what a reporter can report?” the president replied, “No, I don’t think so. Hear, there’s nothing to stop reporters. You know that.”
Goldberg noted that it is more than just a problem for reporters. “The American people have the right to know what the world’s most powerful military is doing with their name and money,” he said. “That seems pretty obvious to me.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment on the AP. Follow him in http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
